


No Shortage of Sordid

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here’s what no one tells you when they’re trying to get you to join their cause, sell you on going topside: Meatsuits aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Shortage of Sordid

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Hozier's "Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene."

Here’s what no one tells you when they’re trying to get you to join their cause, sell you on going topside: Meatsuits aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

It’s a well-known fact that once a demon finds a vessel, very little maintenance is required. There’s no need to worry about starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation, exposure. The side effect is that there’s very little to experience on a personal level, no satisfaction to be gained through taste or texture, rest or relaxation, heat or cold. Ruby remembers these things exist, but her own memories have grown so faint that it’s a better use of her time to shock and awe, rile up the person to whom her body used to belong and pretend the horror and fear and disgust are her own.

Here’s what no one tells you: Spend long enough out of the pit as the invader of a host that has long since stopped giving you the satisfaction of feeling the thrill of secondhand emotions and you will become very, very bored.

So the first time Ruby eats, it’s something she does absentmindedly; it doesn’t even occur to her to consider the sodium content of fast food nowadays. She’s so surprised she nearly chokes. Not that it would matter.

French fries quickly become her favorite. Her tongue, the roof of her mouth, the lining of her throat -- every last exposed piece of tissue sizzles and burns, and as smoke fills lungs that are only halfway hers, as pain spreads through her face and neck and chest, she swears she can almost feel the heat.

_You wish_ , comes a voice from inside her borrowed skull. Bitter. Triumphant.

Almost.

\--

Here’s what no one tells you when they’re trying to romanticize a revolution: Devotion to a cause requires sacrifice.

All of the other demons hate her, she knows. She’s viewed as an outsider, a traitor;  _practically human_ , they say, and they don’t mean it as a compliment. She tells herself that’s the reason she doesn’t mind the new meatsuit. Going green to make the lie more convincing; after all, what does she have to lose?

She picks a coma patient, lights out, no one home, and when she settles in and fills the empty spaces with nothing but her own thoughts, her own feelings, she thinks:  _Oh._

It’s a little like coming back to life. It terrifies her.

When the quiet moments between battles become full of too much of herself for comfort, she goes to him. She offers herself to him, lets herself get lost in the way he fills her up, and every time she feels the ache of his absence, it becomes just a little bit harder to convince herself he’s the one with the addiction.

_I’m using him_ , she thinks, desperately; and, to be fair, she is. She watches him kill the siblings who despise her, watches him grow stronger with every passing day, but when pride that is solely her own radiates through her chest, she knows she is lost. The one thing that keeps her locked into the status quo is the unwavering assurance that the only way this will end is with her betrayal.

_I love you_ , she thinks, but swallows the words.

They burn so furiously going down that for a second she almost feels human.


End file.
